The Dark Box: A Secret History of Confession Read Free Page B

theology, which sourced our training to be confessors, were based on treatises that went back to the original work of the paragon of moral theology—Alphonsus Liguori. There were two sets of manuals: the three-volume Latin textbook Summa Theologiae Moralis by H. Noldin and A. Schmitt, and the four-volume English textbook Moral and Pastoral Theology by H. Davis. The Noldin and Schmitt, whose first edition appeared in 1926, effectively set the direction of Catholic clerical thinking on morals up to the end of the Second Vatican Council in 1965 and somewhat beyond. For the English-speaking seminaries, Davis, first published in 1935, was essential, although sections of it, mostly dealing with sexual morals, were in Latin in order to bar the laity from acquainting themselves with material that might have put bad ideas into their heads. Davis was considered to be impressively up to date. He expounded perspectives from the latest neurophysiology in the ‘morbid sexuality’ sections. For example, he cited neurologist Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s ‘law of avalanche’, from around the turn of the century, to explainhow in the nerves ‘a disturbance, at first localized, is diffused over a great many of the cells of the brain if attention is focused upon it.’ 4 He thereby explained ‘how sex feelings get beyond control if the original stimulus is fostered rather than suppressed.’ He had in mind, naturally, masturbation, the single, unrelieved obsession of Catholic moral theology and daily, it sometimes seemed, preoccupation of Catholic clerics in those days.
    A review of these texts tells us much about the Catholic moral mentality that shaped generations of clerical notions of virtue and sin, and hence the influence exerted via confession over generations of the Catholic young through two-thirds of the twentieth century. One is struck, first of all, by the dysfunctional casuistry. Take fasting before Holy Communion. It was taught that to break the fast and receive the Blessed Sacrament, as we have seen, was a mortal sin. The textbooks enlarged on the circumstances in which the fast might or might not be broken. The rule admitted, it was pointed out, of no exception, and it extended ‘to the smallest quantity of food or drink taken as such’.
    So what does it mean to ‘eat’ or ‘drink’? The thing consumed must be ‘taken exteriorly’. So it is not a violation of the fast, for example, ‘to swallow blood from the gums, or teeth, or tongue, or nasal cavities’, although it would be a violation of the fast ‘to swallow blood flowing externally from the exterior parts of the lips, or from a cut finger, or from the nose, or to swallow tears, unless in each case only a few drops entered the mouth and were mingled with thesaliva.’ To violate the fast, moreover, requires that a substance ‘must pass from the mouth into the stomach, so that the fast is not broken if liquid is taken into the mouth, as an antiseptic or for gargling, and is not swallowed.’ A third condition insists that violation of the fast occurs ‘by the action of eating and drinking’, and inadvertence ‘has no bearing on the matter’ even if it is a ‘drink given to a patient during sleep’. Davis declares that the ‘divines’ are still disagreeing whether a ‘nutritive injection’ is food, but certainly the introduction of soup or milk through a stomach pump is not allowed, ‘whether the injected liquid be intended to nourish or merely to flush.’ Turning to the vexed question of nail-biting, Davis reports that he believes that this does not affect the fast, ‘but biting off and swallowing pieces of finger skin might do so, if the particles were more than the smallest and not mixed with saliva.’ 5
    In the section on what constitutes ‘food’ as opposed to ‘non-food’, the fingernails appear again. In a final wrap-up, Davis writes:
    Metallic substances in specie (gold, silver, iron, lead, etc.) do not violate the fast, but if taken